9 unanswered questions from 'Rise of Skywalker' and the sequel trilogy

Back in 2015, it was super fun to speculate about what would happen in the new Star Wars movies. The Force Awakens might be regarded as a nostalgia-reliant A New Hope ripoff now, but just four years ago, the excitement about what would happen in the rest of the saga was intoxicating. Now that The Rise of Skywalker has “ended” the saga, we’re still drunk off of some of that excitement, but the hangover is kicking in and it looks like we’re going to end the Skywalker saga with some huge gaps of knowledge.

Both The Rise of Skywalker and the entire sequel trilogy has left several questions unanswered. Here are the biggest questions from both Episode IX and all three installments that are still lingering. The speculation might be over, but the questions live forever. And this should go without saying, but… spoilers ahead for The Rise of Skywalker.*

4 unanswered questions from The Rise of Skywalker

4. Who were Rey’s mother, father, and grandmother?

In the new film, we found out Rey’s parents were actually nice people who loved her. Her dad was Palpatine’s son, but who the hell was he? And who was her mom? Because these people were murdered in cold blood, we literally have no idea, which is kind of ridiculous.

If Palpatine had a secret son, you’d think Luke Skywalker might have heard of him. Plus, it’s pretty cool that Rey took the Skywalker name and all, but what about her mom’s maiden name? Why not just go with that?

3. How did the Emperor build the Sith fleet?

The Sith fleet seems to be largely unpiloted, but the greater question is how did it get built? We see a bunch of evil followers who seem to love the emperor, but were all those people engineers? Granted, about 35 years have passed since Return of the Jedi at this point, but it seems really strange that the Emperor fronted the First Order, and, the err…Final Order, too? The resources here just seem impossible.

2. What was Finn trying to tell Rey?

Technically, this question has been answered, but not in the actual film. Throughout the movie Finn has a something he wants to talk to Rey about, and it turns out, according to J.J. Abrams, that was simply to tell her that he felt like he had a connection to the Force. (Which seems to imply Finn had Jedi potential? Maybe?) Still, it’s not addressed in the actual film.

1. Why did Lando stop working for the Rebellion?

Again, off-screen, this has been alluded to in books published in conjunction with The Rise of Skywalker, but in the actual film, we don’t get a sense of why Lando hadn’t been involved with Leia’s Resistance earlier.

It turns out, Naomi Ackie’s new character, Jannah is supposed to be Lando’s daughter. According to one companion book to The Rise of Skywalker, Lando’s daughter was abducted as an infant and sent to a stormtrooper training program. Apparently, this was a strategy the First Order employed to scare the former Rebellion leader into submission.

So, right there, Lando’s absence in the new trilogy has an explanation, and Jannah has a secret origin. But, again, this information isn’t technically in the movie. 

unanswered questions from the entire sequel trilogy

5. How did Maz Kanata get Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber?

In The Force Awakens, Maz says the story of how the famous Skywalker lightsaber — originally carried by Anakin — made its way to her castle was a “story for another time.” But, here we are, at the end of the saga, and that story has not been told.

This is weird, if only because during Rey’s vision in The Force Awakens, we saw images from Cloud City, which was the last place Luke’s old lightsaber was in action before it fell (along with Luke’s hand) into the depths of that floating metropolis. This was a pretty cool tease in 2015, and kind of a bummer now. 

4. What about Snoke? Did he really bridge the minds of Kylo Ren and Rey?

In The Last Jedi, it was revealed that Snoke “bridged” the minds of Rey and Kylo Ren. But now, The Rise of Skywalker reveals Snoke was fake, and Palpatine seems kind of surprised by the fact that Rey and Kylo represent a “dyad” in the Force.

So, if Palpatine created Snoke, and Snoke bridged Kylo and Rey’s minds, how come Palpatine didn’t know about it? Was Snoke truly his own, autonomous creep? Or was he just a sock puppet? And how the hell do you bridge other people’s minds in secret? 

3. Who were the Knights of Ren?

We’ve been asking this for like four years, and after being total no-shows in The Last Jedi, there’s literally nothing in The Rise of Skywalker that hints at who they are. Even a little bit.

2. How come nobody came to help at the Battle of Crait?

At the end of The Rise of Skywalker, seemingly everybody in the galaxy comes to help the Resistance in their final stand against the Final Order. But, when something very similar happened during the Battle of Crait, nobody answered. This is mentioned in dialogue outright by Poe Dameron, but the explanation for the difference is flimsy. Apparently this time, everyone felt like more was at stake, which is confusing.

1. Did Rey’s Force Awakens vision predict The Rise of Skywalker — or something else?

Reys’ vision of the Knights of Ren standing in the rain seemed to be some kind of flashback, or perhaps, a vision of the future. In the opening scenes of The Rise of Skywalker, Kylo Ren seems to be killing people who look very similar to the people he’s taking out in Rey’s Force Awakens vision. But were they? Did the rain she saw represent her and Kylo Ren’s final duel? And if what she saw was a future vision, did it actually come true, or not?

The Rise of Skywalker is in theaters now.